53% of Canadians Want Marijuana Legalized: Angus Reid Poll

Isn't it time to stop arresting marijuana growers and users by ending prohibition?

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Albert Einstein's True Religious Beliefs Revealed

In the letter, he states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

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NYC's Staggering Arrest Rate for Pot Achieved by Deception

New study says New York's cannabis crackdown is both racist and fraudulent - and that more have been arrested under Bloomberg than Giuliani. New York police have arrested almost 400,000 people for misdemeanor marijuana possession in the last decade. Last year, there were 39,700 such arrests, that cost the city $60 to $100 million.

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LSD: A Psychedelic 'Problem Child' Comes Full Circle

Scientists in the 1940s and 1950s, for instance, thought LSD might be the key to providing healing insight, a window on the soul, a way to transcend psychosis, mania, depression.The C.I.A. tested the drug as an aid to interrogation, a kind of truth serum. And this was all before acid met the counterculture on Haight Street in the 1960s.

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Alcohol, tobacco worse than pot, ecstasy: study

New landmark research concludes that alcohol and tobacco are more dangerous than some illegal drugs like marijuana or ecstasy and should be classified as such in legal systems, according to a new British study.

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Cannabis Aids in Hippocampus Neurogenesis and Depression

Cannabinoids promote embryonic and adult hippocampus neurogenesis and produce anxiolytic- and antidepressant-like effects. We show that both embryonic and adult rat hippocampal NS/PCs are immunoreactive for CB1 cannabinoid receptors, indicating that cannabinoids could act on CB1 receptors to regulate neurogenesis.This article brought many things to light for me. It is a shame that the US gov has a monopoly on all research within her borders. Since she has no intention on treating the subject objectively I do not see much coming from these papers.

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The Government Accountability Office (GAO) argues in Death Estimates Demonstrate Severity of Crisis, but Their Accuracy and Credibility Could Be Enhanced that the various organizations that conduct death estimates in Darfur, Sudan could be more accurate. The GAO document is written in an overly broad language avoiding specific sources. It was constructed in a way to have the reader emotionally sympathize with the Darfur crisis while attempting to maintain a professional tone. The GAO used many statistics, but close-to-none were cited properly. The bibliography is in a nonprofessional format, and even looks falsely constructed.

The study was apparently conducted in order to help "safeguard the U.S. government's credibility" and to help reach a consensus of the actual death toll in such a cataclysm as Darfur. Death estimates conducted during a humanitarian crisis have been found to vary too much between different organizations that are conducting these estimates. Limitations of estimates can lead to over or under estimation of deaths occurring in Darfur, which can also lead to mistakes such as too much or too little aid in the right or wrong areas. These obstacles come about due to limited staff, cultural differences with the local people, access to geographical regions, survey conditions, and data gaps (for example an entire village wiped out and no survivors to report the incident). The "experts" consulted did not rate the various methods of conducted estimations consistently high; however proposed their own alternatives and expressed the shortcomings they found instead (GAO 2). The U.S has responded to the crisis, naming the conflict genocide after interviews with several Darfur refugees. The GAO wants to see "greater transparency regarding the data and methods used for such estimates" and recommends various measures to help some of the limitations (such as improved training of nongovernmental organizations) when evaluating the estimates (GAO 14). The data sources reviewed by the GAO where largely the United States Department of State, Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, and World Health Organization. These documents were evaluated to find flaws in which the surveys were conducted as well as the credibility of all organizations mentioned.

Throughout the document, the phrase "the experts" was thrown around in nearly every paragraph, however there is no explanation as to who-was-who in the given argument. Even in the bibliography page these experts were referred to as simply "experts." In Appendix II a list of the "experts" that attended was listed, however there is no explanation as to what their qualifications where or why they were relevant to the situation. This hurts the GAO's ethos and logos because if the audience is unable to figure out where these supposed professional statistics come from exactly, it damages their credibility. In this case an 'expert' could be anyone, and your every day average Joe is not a credible source of information. After reading approximately two pages the document was intimidating to read, it was as if a degree in statistics was require to fully comprehend what was being written. Quickly after, the writing style change and seems particularly ambiguous as well as repetitive.

The GAO plastered a picture of a small village in Darfur on the highlights page. The snapshot depicts a small village, seemingly scarcely populated and in poverty by their crooked fences and small huts. In the middle of the photograph looms a ploom of smoke drifting to the upper-right corner while the home inside, as well as the fence around it, are engulfed in flames. From the few trees offering their stretched shadows, it is assumed the land is dry and little water is near-by to snuff the blaze. When the reader first comes across this page it would be difficult for that person not to feel any emotion toward the picture. The emotional appeal, or pathos, that is induced before the audience even reads the document is probably precisely why the picture is on the highlights page. This picture essentially makes up the reader's mind before even laying eyes on the text. Unfortunately, as you begin to truly read through the actual document, you begin to notice they used pictures as well as graphs and other visual impressions as fillers.

The GAO's statistics were largely unreliable due to major citation flaws as well as varying numbers unrelated to one another. The audience is unable to differentiate fact from opinion, nor the level of reliability because the sources are much too vague. For example, "The experts expressed a lightly higher level of confidence in the [Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters] estimates than the [U.S. Department of State] estimate. However, only two of the 12 experts expressed a high level of confidence, and most had a moderate level confidence..." (GAO 20). The authors never specified who the two experts were that expressed a high level of confidence, nor was there any explanation as to why there was a high level of confidence. It is difficult for anyone trying to do background research on the subject to figure out if these experts have a known bias or even if these people are qualified to have a say on the issues at hand.

The bibliography page was comparable to what is expected of someone attending primary school. For example, the citation for the quote above on page 20 says, "One expert rated having a moderate level of confidence in the estimate by [John] Hagan" (GAO 20). Aside from the poor sentence structure, there is very little information given by the above citation. The GAO seems to avoid giving detailed information, which reflects poorly on the government office's ethos. Perhaps the GAO does not want to be accountable for what they write, it is possible that poor and ambiguous writing is a reflection of an ignorant writing staff; however it may be more likely that the GAO is attempting to protect the government's image in the matter. If Darfur's death toll count is much higher in result of the U.S. pressure for accuracy, and if the U.S. policy between then and now shows the U.S. largely inactive in humanitarian efforts, this will leave a poor reflection on US policy. Realistically the GAO document is written for bureaucrats, and was expected to have quantity instead of quality. Regardless of how well written or how credible the document is, it will have had the same effect on U.S. legislature. The U.S. has already taken their position in the Darfur crisis, thus they will stand by idle while their dollars do the work for them. Those who wrote the document probably felt no need to be specific when citing sources for a document that would receive only a stamp of approval and never really be read or examined in detail.

The GAO's intent was to give advice to help the government's credibility, but after closer analysis of their own work it would seem they have, in all actuality, done the government a disservice. The document itself may even be humorous if it was not on such a devastating topic. The GAO was sloppy and the citations were less than acceptable. The crisis in Darfur is real, people are dying, and perhaps there really is a need to enhance the accuracy and credibility of the death estimates; however the GAO's document seems to be a near apathetic approach to the problem.